31 entries from July 2019

I was first introduced to the cavatelli machine when working at Park Avenue Cafe. A signature appetizer was black pepper cavatelli with a ragout of mushrooms and truffle beurre fondue. Ever since then cavatelli have been part of our playbook. Over the years we have explored numerous ways to shape cavatelli. But over those years we have drifted away from what I know as the classic cavatelli clicker. We have extruded versions of cavatelli as well as shaping them by hand using knives and gnocchi boards. But there is something remarkable about the consistency in size and texture made with the cavatelli clicker.

We have had coffee and tea glazes in use at the shopfor some time. But it has taken until the other day to create coffee and tea crumbs. We combine instant coffee with shortbread and white chocolate for the coffee crumbs. We grind earl grey tea with shortbread and white chocolate for the tea crumbs. These crumbs allow us to add these flavors as accents to our other glazes. The flavor of coffee and tea can compliment instead of take the main focus.

Combine the flour, everything seasoning and baking powder in a medium bowl. Add the ricotta and use your fingers to combine. Continue to bring the mixture together until it forms a dough. Put the dough onto a lightly floured counter top and knead until smooth and silky. Shape the dough into a ball, wrap with plastic or vacuum seal, and let it rest for at least 30 minutes before shaping pasta.

You will need a rolling pin, flour for dusting, and a butter knife or a bench scraper to shape the cavatelli by hand. Have a floured sheet pan at the ready on which to rest the finished pasta. Roll the dough out to a thickness of about 1/4". Cut them into strips approximately 1/2" thick. Cover the extra strips with a damp towel so the dough doesn't dry out while you are making the cavatelli. Cut 1/2" squares using a butter knife or bench scraper. Turn each square diagonally and then drag your butter knife of bench scraper at a 45-degree angle along the square, from left to right, The pasta will curl along the edge of your implement, leaving you with a beautifully shaped cavatelli. It may take a few tries to master the technique, once you develop a rhythm things move quickly.

Lay the finished pasta out on a lightly floured sheet tray and cook immediately or freeze. Once frozen, transfer the cavatelli to a plastic bag and keep frozen until ready to use, up to 1 month. You can cook the pasta directly from the freezer.

I do not understand the tomahawk steak. As a consumer I am paying whatever it is per pound for a huge bone stripped of meat. I much prefer a small handle-like bone to maneuver the steak around the pan. Heck, the giant bone won't even fit in most pans.

We have been making fresh corn polenta for 10 years now. We have a fun recipe for it in Maximum Flavor. Today I wondered what would happen if we added a few tablespoons of instant masa to the polenta. I was hoping to add the toasted and round richness of nixtamilized corn to the fresh sweet corn. I was also looking for a small amount of thickening. The instant masa achieved both. I believe next time we will add a bit more masa to our scraped corn. For a first run it was a delicious evolution.

I have come to realize that I do not like most soups. However, if I incorporate some dairy, potatoes and a touch of something smokey I am willing to sit down and crush several bowls of my creation. I made a corn and black cod chowder. I started with diced mirepoix that I cooked in olive oil and seasoned with salt and red pepper flakes. I added potatoes and a blend of liquids. I used white wine, clam broth, cream and milk as the base. I seasoned it with liquid smoke, soy sauce and some hot sauce. When the potatoes were cooked I took most of the broth and pureed it with corn. I poured the corn base back over the chowder and added additional corn and the black cod. Amaya finished the chowder with my odd ball ingredient, sun dried tomatoes. We added these for brightness and added savoriness in the bowl. It was the perfect summer supper, somehow light and hearty and utterly satisfying.

I grew up eating meltaway coffee cakes. The meltaway was the signal that it was a holiday, a special occasion, or (in later years) that my parents were coming to visit. The meltaway was a coffee cake, rich with butter and made, I believe, with a laminated dough. The only major doughnut dough we had not explored in Doughnutland was a laminated dough. I knew deep fried croissants were delicious, after first trying one when Francisco Migoya did it years ago. As a doughnut maker I was definitely not going to make the hybrid doughnut-croissant dough that Dominique Ansel created and made famous with his Cronut. I needed to make something of my own.

It has taken four years of doughnut making to become comfortable enough in my own skin to explore a laminated a.k.a. croissant doughnut. I started with a basic croissant dough and started tinkering. I increased the butter and added sugar and vanilla. The result was a laminated doughnut, rich, decadent buttery and, surprisingly, at first bite it was the spitting image in both flavor and texture of the meltaway. This was an unplanned effect and a very welcome discovery. My first, second and third bites reinforced my confidence in the creation. It looks like a doughnut, it has layers like a Cronut, and it eats like a meltaway. I could not be happier with dough number 11 in the line up at Curiosity Doughnuts.

Every so often we dip into the cellar and pull out a special bottle of wine. Well okay, they're all special, slowly collected over the years and aged (hopefully) to perfection. Some of the whites may have gotten away from us, getting a little bit too long in the tooth, but thus far the reds have been aging more than gracefully for us. This past week I was in the mood for something different and I pulled out a bottle of Shafer Firebreak. It's one of our few "Last Chance" bottles, the final vintage of sangiovese made by the winery. It was delicious, rich and smooth with red berries and tobacco, a hint of oak and a firm tannic spine to help it stand up to food. I know the remaining bottle or two will be just fine until I'm ready for them, softening and opening just a little bit more with their time in the cellar.

I have been working on bringing homemade marshmallows back to the shop. In the past we have used a variety of recipes, most recently cribbing the work of Stella Parks, from her incredible book Brave Tart: Iconic American Desserts. I started there again, but wanted a recipe with fewer ingredients. I did not want to have to buy corn syrup in order to make marshmallows. I draw the line in the sand in many weird places. My first version was a crystallized mess. As was my second, third and fourth versions. Finally I realized I needed a bit of invert sugar, corn syrup, to prevent crystallization. Since I was not planning on using corn syrup I figured I could invert the sugar by adding acid to the sugar syrup. Version 6 was a failure as the excessive amount of acid I added interfered with the gelling of the marshmallow. I made sour marshmallow fluff. (Perhaps an idea for the future.) In version 7 I cut the amount of acid I used, citric, and achieved marvelously light and delicate marshmallows. Tinkering is a process.

The summer heat has focused our attention on our filled doughnuts. Cynthia mentioned that the Boston Cream was not selling like it used to. She wondered about a fruit flavored custard to take the doughnut in a new direction. Her initial idea was raspberry. Ryan heard strawberry. The result was delicious. We modified our custard recipe. Instead of dairy we used strawberry and passion fruit purees. We kept the rest of the recipe the same. We The lightened the cooled custard with sweetened whipped cream to make an ethereal filling. We topped the doughnuts with our vanilla buttermilk glaze and roasted doughnut crumbs. We topped the strawberry custard with a sprinkle of strawberry crumbs. Summers heat showed us the path to take to beat it.

One of my favorite sandwiches was a peanut butter and jelly spread onto a toasted English muffin. The hot bread melted the peanut butter and the jelly remained a touch cool. The sandwich crackled and oozed as I ate it. Recently I had the chance to share the idea with Amaya. I spread peanut butter and jelly between two slices of bread. I refrigerated the sandwich. Later in the day I put the sandwich in the toaster. The bread toasted. The peanut butter warmed. The jelly remained slightly cool. I let Amaya have the first bite. I let her have the second and third bites as well. She was lost in the sandwich. When she paused, I distracted her long enough to get myself a bite of a memory. It was fantastic.

While we often have the best of intentions, for the last couple of years the weed patch has gone largely untended. We happily shell out money in the beginning of the season for a variety of herbs, briefly harvest and enjoy them, and then they languish. We forget to water and trim, heck we forget to use them at all. So this year we decided to let it go. There was a lot going on this summer and we would take a break. Apparently the weed patch decided otherwise. The basil (pictured above) and the chives came back on their own. They are an unexpected gift and just enough to keep us happy. Those herbs are resilient and we are working on being the same. If we can all learn to flourish when neglected or under duress, imagine what we could accomplish.

It is difficult to begin tinkering without a strong point of reference. I have eaten pierogi in modern American restaurants and purchased frozen pierogi to cook at home. But I do not have an authentic experience to copy and build upon. I started with a sour cream based pierogi dough. The dough was extremely tender and doughy. It had a dumpling like quality that I wrapped around a horseradish cheese filling. I used our pot-sticker style cooking method. The top was soft and the bottom was crispy.

But really, the whole thing from was a nightmare. The dough was too tender and while it kept the filling in place it did not make for an enjoyable eating experience. And my "on the fly" horseradish cheese filling was a creamy disaster with too much heat and an overly fluid cheese.

Now that I have my own baseline, I have a point of reference to build upon.

I had never had scrambled eggs simmered in salsa before. I watched in amazement as the eggs were hard scrambled. When all the eggs were scrambled they were put into a pot of spicy simmering salsa. The eggs were cooked a second time, absorbing the salsa and becoming moist and juicy. The eggs were served with grilled tortillas for a delicious make your own breakfast taco.

I had never thought of storing blueberries, destined for topping yogurt, in a flavored simple syrup. Then I watched our good friend Anthony Goncalves' team putting together yogurt parfaits for an event. I actually thought they were pulling the berries out of water, which I thought was washing the fruit. I was puzzled at first. I asked about the wet fruit and was corrected on my assumption. The water was a simple syrup flavored with cinnamon and orange zest. The syrup coated the berries and dressed the fresh fruit with a flavorful accent. The simplicity of the idea has me asking what other fruits and vegetables we should be lightly dressing.

Whether you make your ownor discover a brand you enjoy, having yuzu kosho in your pantry is essential. I think my only limitation in using it is when I see we are getting low and am unwilling to run out. That's when I hold back when really I should use it up and make sure to better stock our pantry.

It's that time of year, well, honestly, it's always time for ice cream at our house. Due to the limited number of ice creams available in our area the debate between Haagen Daaz (me) and Ben & Jerry's (Alex) is always in play. Amaya has favorites from both categories and those who know us will confirm that there is always a minimum of eight flavors in the freezer at any given time. Unfortunately both offer favorite brands seems to have changed their formulations. Neither of them has been living up to their expectations in recent months and so I've been delving into the ice cream section of our library. The situation is dire so I reached for David Lebovitz's book: The Perfect Scoop, rather than one of the many other books on our shelves. Because even though he doesn't specialize in ice cream, as many others do, his recipes always work. I don't say this lightly. I have never tried a recipe of his that failed or failed to be delicious. That's pretty much the biggest compliment I can give to any food writer. So as the temperature ratchets up, I'm settling down with a good book and trying to decide which flavor to use to break in my ice cream machine.

Of course I've just noticed that there's a revised and updated version of this book out. I'll have to stretch my budget so I can add it to my collection. Something to look forward to, in the very near future.

At Amaya's camp two weeks ago there was a pony wedding. The kids nominated two horses from the stable to get married and the week's free time was devoted to wedding preparations. The parents were invited to come in for the wedding. Amaya was one of the "mothers of the bride" and all of the other ponies were in the wedding party. It was amazing, There were banners and flowers, noisemakers and edible (for ponies) confetti. Every detail was covered right down to the wedding cake. The best man and maid of honor spoke of the bride and groom. Both have known both ponies for years and everyone toasted them with ginger ale. A good time was had by all. It was a timely reminder that we can make any day into a celebration, even if we don't have a wedding going on. In the hustle and bustle of our daily lives it's easy to say we're too busy to celebrate the small stuff. But then we never make time to celebrate anything. Let's all try to learn from our kids and inject a little more fun into our daily lives.

For years we have been making the Butter Burger. For years I have scoffed at the idea of serving burgers on brioche buns. Tonight we made burgers, seasoned only with salt. We topped them with smoked cheddar cheese. (The importance of smoke is a whole other rabbit hole.) We served the burgers on brioche buns.

As I ate, the tender bread barely holding up to the cheese-laden patties, I had an epiphany. It is the butter in brioche that makes it a desirable burger bun. The butter flavor enhances the meat and adds another level of savoriness to the sandwich. Now it looks like we need to explore a butter-centric burger bun with substance that can handle the juiciness of a few griddled burgers.

A jar of granola butter led to unleashing a heck of a lot of ideas on butters from cereal to ice cream cone. These butters are not a long stretch from our cookie magic shell and doughnut magic shell. Sometimes it's all in how you look at ingredients and what you are willing to do with them.

The steam saute is our go to method for cooking dumplings. We have applied the approach to tortellini. It only made sense to cook pierogies the same way. We melted butter in the pan and added frozen pierogi. When they started to sizzle we added a half a cup of water and covered the pan.

We removed the lid after 5 minutes and let the rest of the water cook away. The steamed pierogi where then able to finish sauteing in the butter. The tops were tender and the bottoms crispy.

These were an unexpected find in the local supermarket in the Poconos. They were thin and cooked quickly on the grill. Each steak was a perfect serving for one, rich, flavorful, meaty and delicious. Sometimes a quick cooking method is all you need.

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